I Wore Meggings for One Week, & I'm Never Going Back

Who says leggings are just for the ladies?
- byTom Piccolo

03 Dec
2017

Tom Piccolo

I'll be honest: sometimes, I wear sweatpants in public. And when I do, I can hear the words of Jerry Seinfeld chastising George Costanza in my head: "You're telling the world, 'I give up! I can't compete in normal society. I'm miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.'" When this happens, I'm always jealous of my female friends, who feel comfortable wearing leggings outside the gym. So to see what I was missing out on, I decided to wear meggings (or man leggings) for an entire week.

The first time I donned a pair of meggings — mine came from Kapow Meggings— I looked like I’d been dipped in 24-karat gold from the waist down. The shiny polyester/spandex material clung to my body like the casing around a sausage.

Tom Piccolo

The first day I wore them in public, I was speaking with my boss, pretending like meggings were normal office attire. When I turned around, someone was squatting next to my butt with two thumbs up as his friend took a picture. My meggings had made me a tourist attraction.

As I continued to strut around the office in fancy pants, co-workers to whom I’d never spoken started asking to take pictures. One of them approached me hours later and said that her cousin recognized me from her Snapchat story. He was a college buddy of mine. My meggings had become my networking pants.

Most of what I heard from people was something like, “It takes a confident man to wear those.” People would also ask me, “Did you lose a bet?” My yoga instructor told me about one time she’d complimented a man about his meggings, and he took it to mean that she was into kinky stuff. “Not that I want to do kinky stuff with you,” she assured me. “And I’m not putting you down by saying that I don’t want to, either.” My meggings made people say weird stuff.

Tom Piccolo

The tights actually did help during yoga. I had full range of motion, and I didn’t have to worry about my shorts falling and exposing too much of my man thigh. The biggest change I noticed at the gym was that my fiance didn’t want to be seen near me. But by the end of the week, she appreciated that I wasn't taking myself too seriously. We still plan to get married. The best part? My meggings will become “our meggings.”